If you are looking for a light AV, I must say that Panda free without the web protection always weights in under 10MB (mem usage) on my computers.
They have come a long way the last year in that regard.

Content Creator

Panda are not as liked by other vendors because they do things which most probably deem unethical. They have a browser extension for safe online browsing which can hijack your search engine automatically to a custom MyStart page (associated with many other browser hijackers in adware/PUPs in the past, even this website has an article about it on the official MT blog). They get so many complaints but just didn't care. They even had a forum query about fixing it and the support about it was atrocious haha.

They might have good protection, I do not know, but doing that stuff to make money especially without being 100% clear and helping revert those actions in a good manner is just unethical IMO and therefore I wouldn't trust them as far as I could throw them. Rather use a rogue AV than Panda (or McAfee as well). Panda feels like a rogue with its unethical extensions and McAfee feels like a GUI asking me to pay more money (well it did until they redesigned it)

The MyStart page just uses Yahoo search and displays advertisements... like wow how about you block those ads instead huh?

Content Creator

Oh yeah I agree with Cyber. Especially if Webroot causes many issues with detection which @Slyguy was talking about or doesn't crack down on PUPs/PHAs well... Emsisoft does! In fact Emsisoft really hate PUPs. ESET hate them a lot as well

I can't say if I think WR is good or bad, it would be unfair of me to even share an opinion on that considering I have never tested it to an extent like others in the past. So if some think it is good then thats cool and vice versa. But if someone is using WR and has issues like allegedly happened with others, honestly the best alternate would probably be EAM I think

It has gotten to the point where usually the only recommendation I have to give is just to use EAM because of how much they actually care about their users (protection + privacy) and how good their product is

Oh yeah I agree with Cyber. Especially if Webroot causes many issues with detection which @Slyguy was talking about or doesn't crack down on PUPs/PHAs well... Emsisoft does! In fact Emsisoft really hate PUPs. ESET hate them a lot as well

I can't say if I think WR is good or bad, it would be unfair of me to even share an opinion on that considering I have never tested it to an extent like others in the past. So if some think it is good then thats cool and vice versa. But if someone is using WR and has issues like allegedly happened with others, honestly the best alternate would probably be EAM I think

It has gotten to the point where usually the only recommendation I have to give is just to use EAM because of how much they actually care about their users (protection + privacy) and how good their product is

Click to expand...

Good post. My 'default' recommendation now extends to Emsisoft and only Emsisoft. Of course that is outside of the company where I work, applying to friends/family.. Often the question is asked at family events 'Hey bro, which AV?', I just say Emsisoft and move on. Knowing that the vast majority of them are mindless clickers, and EAM's stance on PUP/PUA/RW gives them added protection they won't find with other products.

Trusted

I am using WR for about a month now.
I wanted to see how it performs.
As always RAM usage is very small but the good thing is that i don't notice to much CPU usage which for me is important.
As for protection it's WebFilter so far seems good.@_CyberGhosT_ said that WR is utilizing EAM sigs. If that is true then it's a big plus for WR.
Now about WRData mine is only 15,8 MB.
As for disk space WR takes about 50 MB.
My opinion is that EAV and WR are the lightest av's on my system.
Very close to them is EAM.
I have used all 3 of them and i am very satisfied, but then again i am not a happy clicker

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Criticism of Webroot is valid, in many tests it scores quite low from what I remember.

Also, the 'lightness' should be portrayed with guarded optimism, Webroot can cause serious issues. One of our MSP competitors recently moved 5,000 systems away from Webroot because of consistent issues, incessant whitelisting requirements and bloaded WRDATA folders consuming SSD drive space. Also, Webroot has been implicated in hiding itself within Explorer.exe to appear lighter than it really is, anyone remember the 10, even 20 times increase in memory usage of explorer.exe when Webroot was used/tested?

My inlaws were Webroot fans, but I consistently found them infected with PUPS and Harmful Riskware. Each time I opened a ticket with Webroot they wrote them off as 'harmless' files/programs, when it fact I proved they were not harmless. Eventually they ignored my further tickets and some Triple Helix guy said I was too stupid to understand how Webroot worked. He bombarded my email with pie charts, graphs and marketing FUD about this or that super-neurotic-network technologies with fuzzy-AI and Albert Einstein brain encapsulation.

Let's not forget the recent fiasco where Webroot very nearly bricked millions of systems.

Very good post, I was going to write something similar (about explorer and WRDATA) so you saved me some time

I just want to add that Webroot doesnt have a proper Win32 emulator/unpacker, cant detect polymorphic or desinfect file infector viruses (old stuff I know) and has very poor protection against legacy malware.

Personally I dont like full cloud antivirus, I think they simple sucks because usually they lack proper emulators and unpackers, something that is very important against handcrafted malware and APT.

For the OP, I would suggest ESET 11, it is very light by all measurements.

They use more than 10MB... Ask yourself, how are the protection components working for things like file-system real-time scanning? It'll have other things using memory like device drivers. The usage of the GUI and service process is not all there is to it most of the time

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I just asked myself , the OP show a pic of his mem usage, I gave the same back but with Panda installed. Easy as that...

I just want to add that Webroot doesnt have a proper Win32 emulator/unpacker, cant detect polymorphic or desinfect file infector viruses (old stuff I know) and has very poor protection against legacy malware.

Click to expand...

I used to get a virus at least once every six months probably more frequently. This was despite trying various different security protections recommended by my shop. I remember using Symantec and Trend Micro. I think I tried others but I can't remember which, it's so long ago.

Since changing to Prevx->WSA in Oct 2006, I haven't been infected once and that's the honest truth.

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